Christmas Eve

We spent our Christmas Eve this year in Sylacauga with the Sprayberry clan.  And I love some Christmas Eve and Christmas.  I, along with Papa Spray (Steven's dad), begin listening to Christmas music sometime the first of November.  I must confess, I've even busted out "Silent Night" on my ipod a few times in late July.  I just can't get enough. 

Isaac enjoyed his Christmas Eve as well.

We kept ourselves very busy.

Playing with trains...

Learning how to make chicken and dumplings...

Enjoying the outdoor fire place...

And playing with Aunt Kelly.

These two hung out in the upstairs playroom most of the afternoon keeping themselves quite busy.

The Sprayberry Christmas Eve tradition consists of going to Gaga's (Steven's grandmother) house that night and eating until we are stuffed.  Chili, oyster stew (which i can't say i'm the biggest fan of ;) ), hot wings, sausage balls, pigs in a blanket, etc, and plenty of desserts.  We always have fun socializing and this year was no exception.

 Rowen enjoying his favorite treat of hot wings...

This little guy was way too busy to eat.  I had to feed him on the run you could say. 

 

Steven's grandfather Pop is one of the sweetest most precious men you will ever meet.  I hate he has his eyes closed in this picture, but I was doing good just to get one of him.  He told me right before I took it that he didn't like pictures. ;)  Sounds like someone I know....hmmm, Steven? 

 

Enjoying the night with Aunt Kelly and CC. 

Steven's granmother, Gaga.

And of course, what would Christmas Eve be without a cousin picture, eh? 

Well, we know Isaac take after his daddy in the picture taking regard.                                                                       

Our best attempt...

After all the festivities, when little boys are in their beds and Santa's sleigh is being followed by the weatherman, we begin the process of putting toys together.  ...well, steven began the process of putting toys together...while I watched White Christmas.

 Just in time for Christmas morning...

Lots of Merry Christmas! First up, xmas lights

Merry Christmas All!!

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas celebrating with family and most of all celebrating our beautiful Savior's birth!  When I saw the above smocked jon jon at a consignment sale this fall I just knew I had to have it.  Who knew Daddy would make fun of it so. He's not into a smocked baby Jesus like mommy is. ;)

Like most of the blogging world, I took a bazillion pictures over the holidays.  No really, a bazillion.  And since it takes me so long to download my pictures on our wonderfully slow computer I'll have to break up the holidays in spurts.  So, here we go.

First up, is our Christmas light tradition.  Well, I guess you could call it a tradition even though we've only done it two years in a row.  One night before Christmas we joined Steven's sister and her family for dinner at one of our favorite fast food chains and then hopped in their car to drive around and look at Christmas light.  I mean "Yites."  Sorry Isaac. 

Mmmmm....Milos.

Everyone was kind enough to let this nauseous preggo ride in the front seat.  They didn't mind though, there was a party in the back.

 Okay so more christmas pictures soon to follow...

Laughter is the best medicine

Steven finally had a day off yesterday so we took to the streets and headed to the mall for a little Christmas shopping.  I intended to get Isaac's picture made with Santa once we arrived but my ever thrifty husband had different plans.  As we walked up to Santa's workshop Steven suddenly turned his whole body around faster than you can say "rudolph's red nose."  What on earth, i wondered.  Was Santa pointing a gun at you or something?  He quickly let me know what all the fuss was about. "SIXTEEN DOLLARS! SIXTEEN DOLLARS??!!  For that money I'll buy a costume and dress up like Santa myself," he says.  Hmmm...looks like I'll just have to go to Brookwood instead for the few bucks cheaper Santa. ;)   Okay, okay, but to his credit I guess I have to agree.  Sixteen bucks for a sit on St. Nick's lap for five seconds hardly seems worth it.

Putting all the money aside, we decided on the two dollar carousel ride instead.  Which is perfectly fine as far as Isaac is concerned...he could ride this all day long.

Steven and I enjoyed a little date night this past Friday attending our lifegroup Christmas party.  Our leaders, Ben and Sally, hosted the entire thing and even fed us an incredibly yummy sit down dinner and afterwards became game show host for our battle of Christmas jeopardy.  It was such a fun night.

I finally remembered to take my camera somewhere with me and used the handy camera timer for a big group picture.  Of course, what would a group picture be without having just a teeny tiny bit of fun.  Okay, I'll admit I have some of my dad in me--he likes to take amusing pictures everytime he gets out the camera.  Being the dramatic girl that I am, I decided to test out my "fast click in row" camera timer setting on the group.  I told everyone that the camera was going to take 10 shots back to back and I needed everyone to start off very serious looking (be it kind of angry like) and then finally end the 10th shot with a HUGE open mouth smile, progessing to that face with each frame.  Well, once we started the girls busted out laughing and of course didn't finish the assignment.  But when I came back home and downloaded the pictures on my computer I noticed that most of the guys it.  And it is hilarious! Just watch the four guys in the back row.  Maybe you won't think it's as funny as me but I was laughing pretty hard when I noticed their commitment to my request.

I'm super impressed my husband stayed in character all the way.  We may just have an actor in you yet. ;)

On Saturday morning I hosted a baby shower for this girl...

 I'm sure you've seen her in many of my past pics.  You know, my really good high school buddies...

 And here we are, all four of us.

After the party the four of us participated in our annual ornament swap.  Every year instead of buying expensive presents for one another we give meaningful ornaments instead.  Here they are making fun of my super fast wrapping job.  I really don't know why they think this is funny.

Jessica had my name this year and here is my lovely ornament now gracing the Christmas tree.  I didn't know I looked like a fuzzy bear. I'm sure by the end of the this pregnancy I'll look like one. ;)

And last but not least what has Isaac been up to you ask?  Oh, you know...just turning yites OFF

                                                               
                                                                   and ON....

Well, I'm surprised if you've stuck with me this long seeing that this is the longest picture post I've done in a while.  And if you would just stick with me a smidgen longer....

My sister Carla sent me an email today--it's a link that you MUST check out for all you mothers out there.  I literally laughed so hard tears were coming down my cheeks.  Isaac was actually wondering what was wrong with me.  The sight involves pregnancy photos and seeing that I'm pregnant my sister was trying to encourage me to take belly shots with this second one. 

Here's the link.  Let me know if you laughed as hard as I did...

http://www.pregnantchicken.com/pregnant-chicken-blog/2010/12/10/awkward-pregnancy-photos.html

It's beginning to look a lot like...

CHRISTMAS!

I'm back!  Two posts in one day...pretty impressive of me I might add.  The following pictures are literally the only ones I've taken of little man the entire December, I'm ashamed to say.  I got this oh so cute hat today for him and thought to myself, "I really wish I had a camera to take his picture..."  Oh wait I still do have a camera!  So I went to dusting it off.

So here's some festive wintery pictures of Isaac in his wintery hat... 

By the way, the scabs are now gone but there's a nice size pimple that decided to rear it's head the other day.  His little baby face can't win for losin'.  And who gets a pimple at 22 months!!  I promise I wash his face people... :)

I love this picture because it is SO him.  You see, he carries around cars (that's "Caws" in Isaac British language) daily.  He loves his cars and as you can see is very protective of his precious gems.

And last but not least our house decorated and ready to go.  Here's a little sample of our tree this year.  Funny story (or I think it's funny)....we went to Lowe's to pick it out the other night and it was one of the first extremely cold nights that we have had.  Of course we both just wanted to hurry and pick out a tree so we could get back in the warm car.  We walked in and walked straight to a row of what seemed like a billion trees.  We picked up the first one we saw and Steven exclaimed "this one is pretty good actually."  Well, I wasn't buying it at first knowing he just wanted to leave the premise as fast as he could--picking out a tree is not one of Steven's favorite hobbies.  To make a long story short I made him pick up a second tree just to be sure, and sure enough he was right.  The second tree was not nearly the tree the first one was, and obviously I was freezing my buns off so we decided on that one.
And I must say this tree is the prettiest one we've had so far.  Full with no holes in it.  We've had some sad looking ones too.

Oh, and if your wondering about Santa pictures like I promised in my last post there are none at the moment.  About an hour before we were about to go Isaac began to tug at his ears and cry, cry, cry.  We know what that means...:(  So, we'll have to do Santa pictures in a few days.

Oh, and if anyone is still thinking about doing the shutterfly 50 free card promotion you definitely should!! The last day you can sign up is tomorrow and then BAM you get FREE cards.  Now that's a holiday gift I can afford.

Merry Christmas everyone!!  I solemnly swear to take the old camera out more....

Giving Christmas Cards

 Tis the season for giving…and definitely the season for giving Christmas Cards! If you haven’t ordered your cards yet there is a special offer from shutterfly going on right now especially for bloggers. I usually get my cards from shutterfly. (Well, last year Wally World because we needed the cheapest route). But, this year bloggers around the world can get 50 free holiday cards from shutterfly by just promoting them on their blog!

So, here goes…

I’ve looked at plenty of designs this year and found the following to be my personal favorites. I’m in need of more than one place to put a photo because the family photo we got of Isaac looks a little angry. Hey, it was cold outside, who can blame him really! ;)

 The reason shutterfly is so great is because, in my opinion, they have some of the prettiest cards out there for great prices.  Here are just some of the great designs you can order from them this year....

Notice how much I like monogrammed cards?  So classy shutterfly, so classy.

And of course we can't forget shutterfly's awesome calendar making.  Every year since I've been married we always get my husband's parents a calendar (from shutterfly of course) every single Christmas.  They LOVE it and look forward to it each year.  We put plenty of pictures from each month of the past year on the pages and his parents can enjoy looking at our beautiful smiling faces all year long. ;)  Of course, it's not our smiling faces now that grand kids are in the mix...

If you want to join in on shutterfly's awesome promotion for bloggers like myself then all you have to do is go to this site.    
http://bit.ly/sfly2010

I'll be back soon with pictures.  Isaac's meeting Santa today for the second time in his entire life.  Unfortunately he's a little more aware of his surroundings this year than last--I'm expecting some tears.  But, sometimes those make the best pictures don't they. ;)

Thanks Shutterfly for the awesome promotion!!